Berakhot 052

15:
We have noted that women are required, just like men, to "accept the yoke of Divine Sovereignty". In a message to me, Ya'akov Adler guesses that they "can accept the Divine Sovereignty by reciting the Shema at any time. So this by itself does not obligate women to recite the Shema at the fixed daily times to which men are obligated. Or, in other words, the mitzvah of accepting the Divine Sovereignty would seem to be a positive mitzvah whose time is not fixed, and therefore obligatory on women." All this is true, but it is not the tack taken by the later poskim [decisors].

16:

Rabbi Joel Sirkes [Eastern Europe, first half of 17th century CE] is better known by his sobriquet "Baĥ", which is a voluminous commentary of the great halakhic code called the Tur. Sirkes writes [Tur Oraĥ Ĥayyim, 70:1]:

Only just recently [Berakhot 045 and Berakhot 047] we noted that reciting the first verse was Keri'at Shema shel Rabbi – that Rabbi Yehudah, the compiler of the mishnah, would make do with this first verse if he were in the middle of a lesson when the time came for reciting the Shema.

17:
The requirement of the Baĥ that all women must recite at least the first verse of the Shema is derived almost verbatim from the statement of Rabbi Yosef Karo in the Shulĥan Arukh [ibid]. Rabbi Avraham Gumbiner [Eastern Europe, 17th century CE] in his great commentary on the Shulĥan Arukh, Magen Avraham [ibid], is not certain whether women are required to recite the berakhot before Keri'at Shema, but is certain that they must recite the berakhah that comes after it, which highlights the Exodus from Egypt, "since recalling the Exodus from Egypt is a command of the Torah."

18:
At the very end of the 19th century CE, Rabbi Me'ir Kagan (the "Ĥafetz Ĥayyim") wrote in his great halakhic commentary, Mishnah Berurah [ibid] that whether women are or are not required to recite the berakhot of the Shema is a red herring, "since they certainly may unexcuse themselves".

To be continued.

We continue with Richard Flom's comments on my explanation Rav says that when a wife is divorced she becomes a man's equal again in this respect [since she is once again a free agent].

Although married women may have had some rights greater than those of the other two groups, they could nevertheless be divorced (discarded like a piece of unwanted property) at the whim of their husbands. Having said that, it raises a question in my mind – did a divorced woman actually become a "free agent" equal to a man, or did she return to her father's house, and thereby become again her father's ward (or, in my view, her father's property)? And, did a man (divorced or not), once out of his parents' house, not become more of a free agent, able to refuse to do his parents' bidding? If that is the case, then it would seem that the woman has merely exchanged one master for another.

I respond:

We must carefully distinguish between various periods in Israel's social development. The economic plight of most women was such that their only hope for survival was in marriage. In Biblical times certainly a divorced woman would be returned (in disgrace) to her father – and her chances on the marriage market were then probably nil. The law of Levirate Marriage (check out the archives using the keyword "Levirate") was originally intended (among other aims) to afford some modicum of security to a childless widow. However, in Talmudic times the situation was different, at least for those women who had money of their own (probably a gift from their father). They could stipulate in the premarital negotiations that their real estate not be considered part of the common marriage property: at the very most the husband could enjoy only the profits from the estate, and at the end of the marriage both the property and its profits would revert entirely to the woman. So it is not unjust to say that a woman could be a free agent after divorce and many were. Most women, however, would agree with the adage quoted in their name by the Talmudic sage Rabbi Shim'on ben-Lakish [Kiddushin 7a]: "It is better to live with a heap of woe [a bad husband] than to live alone as a widow". Anything was better than that!

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